History
In 1883 Gaston Tissandier was the first to use electric motors in airship propulsion. The following year, Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs flew La France with a more powerful motor.
Nikola Tesla envisaged using electrically powered aircraft, powered by beams from the ground or the ionosphere.
Electric motors have been used for model fixed-wing aircraft since from at least 1957, with a challenged claim from 1909.
In 1964 William C. Brown demonstrates on CBS News with Walter Cronkite a model helicopter that receives all of the power needed for flight from a microwave beam.
In 1973, Fred Militky and Heino Brditschka converted an HB-3 to an electric aircraft. Heino flew it for 14 minutes that same year.
In 2007 the non-profit CAFE Foundation held the first Electric Aircraft Symposium in San Francisco.
In 2009, a team from the Turin Polytechnic University made a conversion of a Pioneer Alpi 300. It flew 250 km/h for 14 minutes.
By 2011 the use of electric power for aircraft was gaining momentum. At AirVenture in that year the Electric Aircraft World Symposium was held and attracted wide attention. It was sponsored by GE Aviation and included presentations by US Air Force, NASA, Sikorsky Aircraft, Argonne National Labs and the US Federal Aviation Administration.
Read more about this topic: Electric Aircraft
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